Saturday, September 04, 2010

Software Saturday - Sportacular

This week's app selection is timely as it coincides with the start of college football season in the US.

Sportacular is the iOS app that I would've expected ESPN to develop. It's literally the best sports news app I've encountered on the platform over the past two years. There are sections of the app for most major sports, each with scores, standings, and news.

What makes this app an indispensable part of my Fall is the way it utilizes Apple's Push Notification system. In my household, we have a diverse set of teams we follow each weekend. On Saturdays, we follow our alma maters of Tulane, Auburn, LSU, and Florida State. On Sundays, we follow the New Orleans Saints and Houston Texans. Keeping up with game start times and score changes is easy with the help of Sportacular, though.

For each of my favorite teams, I've configured Sportacular to send a variety of Push Notifications to my phone. Three hours prior to kickoff of each game, I get a notification to remind me to get near a TV at home or at a sports bar. At kickoff time, I get another push notification signaling the start of the game in case I forgot. Each time there is a score change in the game, I get a score alert notification. Finally, once the game is over, I get a final score notification.

If I'm actually able to watch the game on television, these alerts are less important. However, this past Thursday night was an example where 3 of my teams (Tulane, the Saints, and the Texans) were all playing simultaneously and I wasn't able to watch any of them on television. Since I had my iPhone with me, I was still able to casually keep up with the games.

You can find the App Store links and additional information about Sportacular at the link below.